1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to identifying and learning commercials during a program such as a broadcast television program, and more specifically to identifying and learning commercials during a broadcast television program using transcript information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Television viewing systems are available which automatically detect selected segments of a television signal such as commercial advertisements or undesired portions of the program. These commercial detection systems are typically used to mute the audio portion of the television broadcast when the undesired portion of the program appears, or for controlling a video player to skip the undesired portion of the program during recording or replay. Although a wide variety of techniques have been developed for detecting selected segments of television programs, none of the prior art systems monitor the transcript information (e.g., closed-captioned signal) of a television program to identify and learn the commercial portions which occur during the program. In addition, none of the prior art systems identify, segment and store individual commercials which occur during a commercial segment of the program for later use, for example, to create a library of commercials to identify corresponding commercial portions of subsequent television broadcasts.